Comment on What's the best way to respond to someone who says "transracial is just as valid as transgender"?
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 day agoI’m thinking of a situation where someone can easily pass as either race depending on context and they might change their identity based on finding out new information. Not altering their skin color or even their behavior necessarily, just how they identify.
Also, in the US race for the census and other federal data collection is based on self-identification and has been for well over a decade. A lot of people with mixed ancestry often choose one as the race they identify with based on social perceptions, like choosing to identify as black despite having a white parent where they could be both white and black because of social pressures. Or their parent raises them to identify as white because they don’t want their kid to suffer from racial oppression .
That just seems comparable as something that is imposed on someone, isn’t always accurate, has social pressure to go with first impressions, and a negative response to someone choosing how they want to identify.
Note: This does not include Rachel Dolzal (sp) who changed the color of her skin, that was definitely someone who was pretending using blackface.
amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
seems like you’re confusing ethnicity and race. even if biracial Black people identify as white because of having a white parent (anti-Blackness) that doesn’t change the fact they will continue experiencing racism for being Black. race is all about first impressions because it was meant to be a cognitive model for white people to reduce our guilt for enslaving Black people.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 day ago
There are actually a lot of people who meet the social definition of black but are white passing by being right skinned enough and they choose not to identify as black to avoid the racism.
amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
you mean they were raised with Black culture? there’s a difference between Black American as an ethnicity and Black as a racial classification. a white biracial can be raised by 2 Black parents and identify with that culture but that won’t lead to them experiencing racism because their phenotype is still white to cops and other whites. i don’t understand the relevance of how biracials identify?
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I don’t think this is going anywhere because you seem to think anyone can spot whether someone is black at a glance.